An example of a storage system, such as one described above, that has an environment adjuster for adjusting, for each storage section, storage environment of the articles held in article holders in storage sections is described in JP Publication of Application No. H11-168135 (Patent Document 1). The storage system of Patent Document 1 is a system which stores article transporting containers which hold a plurality of semiconductor substrates that need to be stored in an inactive gas atmosphere.
The storage system of Patent Document 1 includes, as the environment adjuster and for each storage section, an inactive gas supplying device which supplies inactive gas to the transporting container stored in a storage sections. And an environment managing portion (the controller 20 in Patent Document 1) collects information about the storage environment for the semiconductor substrates, such as opening and closing information for valves in supply pipes, supply pressure information for inactive gas, and supply flow rate information, and controls operations of the plurality of the inactive gas supplying devices, for each storage section.
Other examples of storage systems having an environment adjuster are described in JP Publication of Application No. 2009-48588 (Patent Document 2) and JP Publication of Application No. 2012-25557 (Patent Document 3). The storage system of Patent Document 2 and Patent Document 3 is a system for storing article transporting magazines that hold a plurality of rechargeable battery cells (see Paragraph [0013] in Patent Document 2).
In the case of the storage systems which store magazines for rechargeable battery cells such as ones disclosed in Patent Documents 2 and Patent Document 3, each storage section is provided with a charging device, which functions as an environment adjuster, which supplies electric current to the magazine stored in the storage section. And an environment managing portion collects information about the storage environment of the rechargeable battery cells, such as information about operating state of the charging devices, temperature in the storage sections, and existence of smoke in the storage sections, and controls operation of the plurality of charging devices for each storage section.
The storage transport devices, which the storage systems of Patent Documents 1-3 have, perform carry out transport operations in which article holders are transported from storage sections in the storage structure to a carry-in-and-out portion, and carry in transport operations in which article holders are transported from the carry-in-and-out portion to storage sections. The carry out transport operation and the carry in transport operation of the storage transport device are controlled by a carry-in-and-out managing device. While not described in detail in Patent Documents 1-3, in order for the carry-in-and-out managing device to manage, or keep track of, which article holder is stored in which storage section, the managing device manages, or keeps track of, the location of the storage section in which a given article holder is stored such that the location is associated with the identifying information of the article holder.
The carry-in-and-out managing device controls carry out transport operation and carry in transport operation of the storage transport device based on a carry out request for retrieving, or carrying out, an article holder from the storage structure and a carry in request for storing, or carrying in, an article holder to the storage structure. A superordinate primary managing device outputs these carry out requests and carry in requests, as described, for example, in JP Publication of Application No. 2005-19911 (Patent Document 4). More specifically, the primary managing device outputs to the carry-in-and-out managing device a carry out request for retrieving, or carrying out, an article holder specified by means of the identifying information provided to each article holder, from the storage structure, or a carry in request for storing, or carrying in, an article holder specified by the identifying information, to the storage structure, in order to have the specified article holder carried into the storage structure, or to have the specified article holder carried out from the storage structure.
In the storage systems described above, when the storage environment of the articles held in the article holders undergoes significant changes in terms of the quality control of the articles, the carry-in-and-out managing device controls the operation of the carry-in-and-out transport device based on the information about the storage environment obtained from the environment managing portion. For example, in the storage system of Patent Document 2, when abnormal condition occurs in the storage environment in a storage section, the article holder stored in that storage section is retrieved and moved to a predetermined location by the storage transport device. Incidentally, Patent Document 2 describes an example in which the carry-in-and-out managing device also has the function of the environment managing portion.